Interior - Door Cards
I wanted to do something different with the door cards and also wanted them to share the same design aspect as the seats and headliner (TMI Black Suede). A pet hate of mine was the cardboard like backing that original door cards were made of as well as the clips that held them on.
I decided that I wanted to make mine stronger and easier to remove so I built them out of 5mm aluminium panel. I used the original panels as a template and got to work cutting them out. It did take a lot of fine tuning but eventually I had all the edges pretty close to that of the door panel. To allow a perfect final fit I then routed the back edge of the panels.
I drilled out each hole on the panel with a slight offset to the original door card. I then used nutserts in the door panels so that i could use stainless bolts to attach the panel onto the door. Becasue of this I countersunk the holes in the door so that when the panels were covered with leather it would give a more refined look. Below is an image of the test piece of leather and stainless fittings I used to get the depth right.
Now I just needed to design the pattern used on the door card. I chose a combination of leather, suede and blue boot stiching. I designed the shape of the suede insert and then cut it out of thin MDF to assist the uppolstery shop. I used the belt sander to get the lines perfectly smooth.
I also didn't want to use a standard door pull so opted to include a leather strap into the design. This would cross over the suede insert as seen in the mockup on the right. This strap would use 2 chrome end caps to secure and hide the ends of the leather strap. The holes for these were threaded into the 5mm Aluminium to allow for easy installation (and no fiddly bolts on the otherside of the panel).
